1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is concerned with an automatic sampling device for bulk materials in powder, granular or liquid form in containers carried by automobile vehicles such as tank lorries or wagons using a mobile sampling probe, and a process for putting such a device into operation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the domain of industrial product quality control, it is well known to take samples in order to verify the conformity of the products with the established standards.
Up till now, in the case of the quality control of products in bulk in tank lorries or similar, comprising in general several separate compartments, an operator carries out the control manually by introducing what is called a sampling tube successively into the different manholes of the compartments of the tank.
This sampling technique naturally presents various important inconveniences.
On the one hand, this type of manual sampling is inexact, because, with the operator introducing the sampling tube by hand, he does not know exactly at what depth it is immersed in the bulk product, and for this reason, the quality of the sample is random.
In addition, such manual operations, even when carried out by several operators, take a certain time, and it is not always possible to check all the tanks, unless a number of operators is available to sample simultaneously the different tanks, which would always be onerous.
It is to be noted that such controls are applied to a large number of important products of industry and commerce, such, for example, as milk products, flour, milled products, starch, animal food-stuffs, sugar, salt, cocoa, and also cement, plaster, liquid chemical products, fuels and also even wines, oils, etc.
That is why the present invention has the purpose of permitting a strict and precise control of samples, enabling also a saving of precious time and the taking of more representative samples both from the qualitative and quantitative view-points.